A young Palestinian man looking to help his missing family, which was bombed by the Israelis, is shot by an Israeli sniper and then as he lay wounded is shot again and killed

As pro-Gaza demonstrations with anti-Jewish sentiments spread throughout Europe, a public debate in Germany aims to draw a clear line between criticism of Israeli politics and hatred of Jews.

"Berlin police cower before Jew-haters," proclaimed a headline in the Berlin newspaper "Tagesspiegel" - and this line has been posted numerous times on social networking sites. It was reported that a group of Arabs shouted "Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone" at a recent demonstration and police officers did not interfere.

In many European cities, what began as peaceful protests turned into outpourings of anti-Jewish sentiments and violence against counter-demonstrators. The situation became particularly heated in France, where street fights broke out between protestors and police in front of synagogues over the weekend. In Berlin, meanwhile, state security authorities have launched an investigation against a Muslim preacher from the Al-Nur mosque who posted a video on YouTube calling for murder of Jews.

Germany's special role

Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, Israel's ambassador to Germany since 2012, has expressed indignation and concern over the incidents.

"We have nothing against demonstrations or against freedom of expression - that's the core of democracy," Hadas-Handelsman told DW in an interview. "But when, as happened this weekend, it leads to violence against the police or against pro-Israeli demonstrators, then it is unacceptable. I think Germans should be worried by that, because you also hear anti-Semitic slogans like 'Jews into the gas' - in Germany?"

He added that Germany needed to consider how to deal with anti-Jewish protests of this kind.

Politicians from nearly all German political parties have condemned the hostile displays. However, at this stage, the German government does not see a reason to raise alarm. According to a government spokesperson, everything is being done to protect Jewish institutions.

Islamists drive anti-Israel campaign

The Gaza conflict has stirred up public opinion in Europe, and it has brought Israel-hatred to Germany along with it, according to political scientist Stephan Grigat.

"You don't need great differentiation skills to be able to assert that this is straightforward anti-Semitism, in a drastic form that could also be found on the streets of Germany 70 years ago," said Grigat.

Grigat, who currently teaches at the Jewish Studies Institute at the University of Vienna, does not find the latest developments in Germany surprising. He pointed out that major demonstrations also took place during the confrontation between Israel and Hamas in 2012.

"However, in those years it was mostly people who identified with left-wing politics and who expressed harsh and often inappropriate criticism towards Israel," explained Grigat, adding that the current demonstrators are mostly members of Islamist groups. "Many of the participants openly express support for Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Islamic jihad.”

From his perspective, there is a perfidious tactic behind the Islamists' campaign: "They use photos of dead civilians in Gaza to attach the 'Israel the child killer' image to their propaganda crusade in typical anti-Semitic fashion."

Another new factor in the latest protests is the "pronounced aggression" - and the fact that it is possible to mobilize several thousand people in a short time.

Different from other conflicts?

Grigat has also observed a growing anti-Israel stance in mainstream German society. And he finds that the term "Israel-criticism" alone reveals a lot about the negative sentiment. After all, he said, nobody speaks of "Japan-criticism" or "Sweden-criticism" when they do not approve of something the Japanese or Swedish government does.

"This expression shows what all this is really about: not reasonable criticism of individual decisions made by the Israeli government, but plain resentment of the existence of the Jewish state," said Grigat.

Whoever demonstrates in the street to show solidarity with the Palestinian victims should ask themselves why they don't do the same during other conflicts, added Grigat. "You really need to ask the question why 200 dead Palestinians are enough to send 10,000 people into the streets but nobody seems interested when 100,000 people are killed in Syria.”

There is also a heated debate on social media sites about the concerns about dead and injured Palestinians. Many have observed, similarly to Grigat, that the Gaza crisis has been exploited by some for political purposes. One Twitter user wrote: "When I was against the war in Iraq, I shouted, 'Stop the war in Iraq.' If you are against the war in the Middle East, why are you calling 'Down with Israel’?"

But another Twitter user posed the question, "At what point can you call it genocide without being accused of anti-Semitism?" A third user said "I can very well oppose anti-Semitism during German protests and Israel's attacks against Gaza at the same time.”

Jewish criticism of Israeli politics

Rolf Verleger, a Jew and former board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, places most of the blame for the current mood on the Israeli government. In a recent interview on German radio, he pointed out that the Gaza Strip had come to resemble a giant prison and said it should be possible for a person to express criticism of Israel's Gaza policy without being branded an anti-Semite.

He also cannot understand it when German politicians are reluctant to criticize Israel based on German history. "What do my murdered ancestors have to do with the injustice perpetrated in the Middle East right now?" asked Verleger. "You can't just permit injustice to continue because of horrible things that happened in the past.”

More protests likely

Many Germans see things the same way. In a recent survey by the "Stern" magazine, more than half of respondents place the blame for the conflict on both Israel and Hamas - and 86 percent believe that Germany should not publically stand on the Israeli side.

In the meantime, pro-Gaza demonstrations are set to continue in Germany and other European countries. They have a good chance of reaching a high point on Quds Day, which is used each year as an occasion for anti-Israel demonstrations around the world as it calls for the "liberation" of Jerusalem from "Zionist occupiers."

So when Hamas shoots rockets at the Dimona nuclear site and gets lucky and cracks it open, causing a dirty cloud to spread of the region and causing death and sickness to the people of 3 areas, israel, Jordan and the palestinian controlled territories is that injustice?

Is the very attempt to destroy a functioning nuclear power plant not injustice?

How about those 120 rockets a day aimed at civilians on purpose? Is that injustice?

Or when Hamas murders one of their own for "collaboration" without a real trial, is that injustice?

Or when Hamas supporters smash a large rock thru the windshield of a passing car trying to kill the driver and passengers, is that injustice?

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.

“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda. “We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” Oren said in the interview.

When a reliably delectable dove such Tzipi Livni closes ranks with her own government against Hamas, the occupiers of Gaza have reason to worry. I say “occupiers” because the legally elected government of Gaza is Fatah, overthrown (or defenestrated, if you like) by Hamas’s 2007 coup d’état. Consequently, Gaza has no internationally recognized government; instead, it is territory “controlled” by heavily armed terrorist cabals loosely aggregated under the rubric, “Hamas”. Thus, Gaza has no legal standing in international venues. It is reliant upon the compassion of non-governmental bodies, with some countries, e.g. Turkey, lending moral and material support. So egregiously barbaric have been the recent behaviors of Hamas that erstwhile allies such as Egypt and Livni have deserted it. Hamas is in serious trouble when a moral relativist such as Livni cannot concoct a fabulist tale of woe in its defense.

Hamas is not wholly bereft of friends. Today, Messrs. Kerry and Obama shut down US air traffic into Israel via the FAA. While this may seem to them a clever move that will pressure Israel into submitting to a worthless “truce”, it may backfire. With its international commerce stymied Israel’s reluctant leader, Mr. Netanyahu, may come to see Israel’s plight as existential and push the Gaza ground offensive to the definitive end of irreparably crushing Hamas. That Mr. Netanyahu failed to recognize the struggle for what it is, existential, without threats from within his own party and cabinet to dissolve his coalition government otherwise, may spell an end to his role as prime minister in the near future. Indeed, Ms. Livni may be the unwitting harbinger of Mr. Netanyahu’s political demise. There will be those who ask, “If even Tzipi understood the danger, how did the Prime Minister overlook the obvious”?

Didn't connect the Obama FAA closure, but now that you say it? It's very clear.

And your point about how this will in fact PUSH Israel to go for it as there is no way to make an agreement for a Hunda that means anything. Kicking the can down the road, to allow hamas to rearm and dig deeper for the next round of violence? HELL NO.

The redline has been crossed. Hamas has to be mortally wounded. Or at least completely defanged. However I did read that Israel is also starting to go after islamists INSIDE of israel as well, a 5th column so to speak.

The EU an the U have made it "Off Limits".Especially after the MH17 incident in Ukraine and the destruction of the planes on the ground in Tripoli, the deal is done until the conflict is over. Cease fire signed and enforced.

but the Hamas aiming for a international civilian airport JUST increased the significance of their war crimes.

Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two state solution? by Alan M. DershowitzJuly 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4467/hamas-israel-airport

Hamas’s decision to fire rockets in the direction of Ben Gurion Airport may well have ended any real prospect of a two-state solution. Whether the regulators and airlines that have stopped flights to and from Israel are right or wrong, this stoppage cannot possibly be tolerated by a democratic country that relies so heavily on tourism and international travel. It is of course a war crime to target an international civilian airport, as Hamas has clearly done. Israel has every right to keep that airport open, employing all reasonable military means at its disposal. Since Hamas fires its rockets from densely populated civilian areas, there will be more Palestinian civilian deaths.

“Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!”

What’s this? The ravings of a fundamentalist Jewish settler in Gush Etzion? Congratulations from a Christian Zionist hunkered down in his bomb shelter somewhere in the Deep South?

Actually, no. It’s a Twitter message sent out by Azza Sami, who writes for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. Her sentiments are widely shared in Egypt. Why? Because the Egyptians have had firsthand experience of what the Muslim Brotherhood does once it gets in power and they know that Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and, if anything, far more brutal than the Egyptian version. They also know that Hamas allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in its assaults on Egyptian soldiers and citizens. Speaking for many Egyptians, actor Amr Mustafa told Palestinians they should not expect any relief aid from Egypt until they “get rid of Hamas.” He added, “We’ve had enough of what you did to our country.”Hamas are terrorists pure and simple. The Egyptians get it. Why doesn’t the Western media get it? Why don’t Western leaders get it? And why don’t Christian leaders get it?

In the war of public opinion that surrounds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the press, the prime ministers, and the prelates invariably take the Hamas-Palestinian side. The Palestinian propagandists can count on the media to run footage of dead and wounded Palestinians, just as they can count on Church leaders (both Catholic and Protestant) to bemoan the “slaughter of the innocents.” They can also rely on world leaders to condemn the “cycle of violence”—as though there were a moral equivalence between the actions of the Palestinians and the actions of the Israelis.

But there is no moral equivalence. To paraphrase Churchill, never in the history of human conflict has one side (Israel) done so much to protect the lives of civilians on the other side. Conversely, never has an opposing force shown so little regard for civilian lives—either that of their enemy or of their own people.

To minimize civilian casualties among Gazan citizens, the Israeli Defence Force first gives warning of an impending attack via telephone, pamphlets, and warning shots. And Hamas? Hamas positions its rocket launchers near schools, hospitals, and mosques and in private homes next to apartment buildings. When the Israelis warn Gazans to leave, Hamas orders them to stay and act as human shields. An IDF poster captures the contrast succinctly: “Israel uses weapons to protect its civilians. Hamas uses civilians to protect its weapons.” Hamas also uses civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. They don’t mind if their own people are killed as long as the compliant Western media is willing to publish the photos of mangled bodies and wailing mothers.

Moral equivalence? Consider how the two sides reacted to the murder of three Israeli teens by Palestinian terrorists, and, shortly after, to the murder of a teenage Palestinian boy by Jewish extremists. The death of the Jewish boys was a cause of celebration in the Palestinian communities, the death of the Palestinian boy was an occasion of sorrow for the Israelis.

It’s not as though jubilation over Jewish deaths is an aberration in the West Bank and Gaza. It’s woven into the fabric of Palestinian society. Palestinian children are soaked in hatred of Jews almost from the cradle. Jews are demonized in schools and on children’s television. Kindergartners in Gaza are dressed like terrorists and suicide bombers on graduation day. At higher grade levels, youngsters are encouraged to compose essays expressing their dreams of murdering Jews when they grow up. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that—particularly in Gaza—Jewicide is presented as more or less the purpose of life. In fact, getting rid of Jews is the raison d’etre of Hamas. The preamble to the Hamas Charter calls for the elimination of Israel and Article Seven envisions the extermination of all Jews. And now that the Palestinian authority in the West Bank has formed a unity government with Hamas, there is little reason to believe that their aims are any different.

Catholic writers love to expound about how much we can learn from the Christian fantasy literature of authors like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. But when real-life situations arise that are comparable to the epic conflicts that occur in, say, The Lord of the Rings, Catholics don’t seem to notice any connection. If you are looking for a real-world counterpart to the Men of the West defending their cities and towns against Mordor, it would be difficult to find a clearer ethical divide than that which separates the Israelis from Hamas. There was, of course, a tremendous moral gulf between the Allies and the Nazis in World War II, and numerous writers have pointed out the similarities between England and “the Shire” on the one hand and Nazism and Mordor on the other. Still, one has to admit that the Israelis have been more scrupulous in the conduct of their war with Hamas than the Allies in their war with Hitler. Allied bombing raids, particularly those of the British, resulted in the incineration of hundreds of thousands of German civilians. Some of this was quite deliberate. As Churchill put it, “the civilian population around the target area must be made to feel the weight of war.”

Nevertheless, though the Germans suffered far more casualties than the Allies, no one would argue that the Nazis were their moral equivalents, let alone their moral superiors. That one side is losing more lives doesn’t tell us anything about the morality of their cause or about who started the conflict.

In reading The Lord of the Rings, we instinctively side with the Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves against the Orcs—in real life not necessarily so. The Palestinian people are made in the image of God. They are not Orcs any more than were the Germans who were caught up in the Nazi system. Yet the cause of their leaders reeks of Mordor, just as did the cause of the Nazis. The difference is, we didn’t sympathize with the Nazis. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, much of the civilized world has, metaphorically speaking, chosen to take the side of the Orcs.

Christian leaders are no exception. Many of them have allowed themselves to be drawn in by leftist and Palestinian propaganda. Catholic groups such as Pax Christi, Cordaid, and Trocaire have been at the forefront of the BDS campaign against Israel, while the Presbyterian Church has embraced BDS as though it were a requisite for salvation. Meanwhile, prominent Christian leaders including bishops, cardinals, and patriarchs have been content to echo Palestinian calumnies that brand Israelis as “Herod” and “Christ-killers,” and the State of Israel as an “apartheid” state. Although many Christian leaders say all the right things about Judaism and the Jewish people and the evils of anti-Semitism, they regard the state in which half of the world’s Jews reside as an international pariah, while at the same time holding it to a standard of behavior that no other nation on earth has ever met.

The Catholic Church is not the most strident critic of Israel, but neither does it have a very good record in this regard. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel, and it relies heavily for its assessment of the Middle-East situation on Arab Christian clerics who tend to parrot the Palestinian line. In The Vatican Against Israel, Italian journalist Giulio Meotti makes the case that the Vatican has shown a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias ever since the creation of the Jewish state. Meotti overstates his case in places and, unfortunately, he subscribes to the myth of “Hitler’s pope,” but he does present an impressive display of evidence that the Vatican, whatever its solicitude for the Jewish people, has been no friend to Israel.

You can maintain, contra Meotti, that Church leaders have merely adopted a policy of neutrality. But that’s what moral equivalency is all about, isn’t it? And do you really want to be neutral between a state that values human life and one that celebrates death?

Along with other world leaders, Church leaders fret about the “cycle of violence,” but by lending legitimacy to leaders who deserve no legitimacy, they only help to perpetuate the cycle. Just as the Obama administration continues to send checks to the Palestinian-Hamas unity government, Christian leaders continue to sign vouchers testifying to the good character of a political movement that is bent on genocide.

Undoubtedly there are many Gazans who, like their Egyptian counterparts, would like to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood overlords who have created so much misery in their lives. But there’s scant chance of that happening if world leaders and Church leaders keep pouring out moral support for the Palestinian Islamists.

My friend, even a fake grunt can get one right occasionally. :-) ...course, I'm the only dog with papers and a tag... :-)

Israel has lost about 30 men when last heard. A guy with his cellphone walking around in a hot zone could be a spotter or recon. Why should Israel risk losing more troops. What's odd is that it wasn't a kid with a cellphone. I guess they will try that next time. Oh, I hope the Israeli's captured that cellphone.

El Al is going to make a killing. It has announced that it will continue flights in and out of the airport. Since the US administration finds Ben Gurion so hazardous, Israel should be spared the presence of Mr. Kerry for a while. As to him using Israeli military aircraft facilities, Israel can object on the same grounds: it is far too hazardous to allow such a high value target to come within range of Hama's rockets...Bummer...

As to the Poles thinking themselves Russian, that is about as likely as Geronimo saying he was from Indiana. Give me a break! This guy certainly never thought himself Russian...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsRYqJP3d68

The Poles were fiercely independent, which is why the Czars were forever having to suppress them. I am confident that the Mileikowsky's considered themselves Polish, the Russian boot notwithstanding.

A guy with his cellphone walking around in a hot zone could be a spotter or recon. Why should Israel risk losing more troops. What's odd is that it wasn't a kid with a cellphone. I guess they will try that next time. Oh, I hope the Israeli's captured that cellphone.

It's remotely possible both Ukraine regiments and rebels had Buks in the area. And regardless of which Buk shot which plane on which day (other planes have been shot), the rebels may have gotten rid of their Buks out of an abundance of caution. This would explain some Buks headed back to Russia whether they actually shot MH17 or some other Ukrainian plane on a prior day.

But the question remains why Ukraine would even want to have Buks since rebels do not have aircraft? Was Ukraine hoping to shoot down a Russian jet?

This seems to be headed in the conspiracy theory that, as unlikely as it sounds, drunk/bored anti-air Ukrainian military soldiers with nothing to shoot at may have mistook MH17 for Putin's plane based on seriously flawed information & conspiracy non-sense?

"The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of Presidents," due out August 5th, and Kessler has discovered that Bill Clinton has a mistress that shows up at the family estate in Chappaqua moments after Hillary leaves every time. Her name is the "Energizer.

The Secret Service detail for Hillary doesn't like Hillary 'cause she's mean to them.

That detail always tells Bill's detail when she's on her way back so the "Energizer" can get out of there in time.

Kessler quotes a supervisor informing a new agent: “You don’t stop her, you don’t approach her, you just let her go in.”

Energizer, who is described as charming and friendly, sometimes brought cookies to the agents, according to the book excerpts.One told Kessler: “It was a warm day, and she was wearing a low-cut tank top, and as she leaned over, her breasts were very exposed. They appeared to be very perky and very new and full … There was no doubt in my mind they were enhanced.”

Rolf Verleger, a Jew and former board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, places most of the blame for the current mood on the Israeli government. In a recent interview on German radio, he pointed out that the Gaza Strip had come to resemble a giant prison and said it should be possible for a person to express criticism of Israel's Gaza policy without being branded an anti-Semite.He also cannot understand it when German politicians are reluctant to criticize Israel based on German history. "What do my murdered ancestors have to do with the injustice perpetrated in the Middle East right now?" asked Verleger. "You can't just permit injustice to continue because of horrible things that happened in the past.”

More protests likely

Many Germans see things the same way. In a recent survey by the "Stern" magazine, more than half of respondents place the blame for the conflict on both Israel and Hamas - and 86 percent believe that Germany should not publically stand on the Israeli side.In the meantime, pro-Gaza demonstrations are set to continue in Germany and other European countries. They have a good chance of reaching a high point on Quds Day, which is used each year as an occasion for anti-Israel demonstrations around the world as it calls for the "liberation" of Jerusalem from "Zionist occupiers."

The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)

“In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate You are the best community that has been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah. And if the People of the Scripture had believed, it had been better for them. Some of them are believers; but most of them are evil-doers. They will not harm you save a trifling hurt, and if they fight against you they will turn and flee. And afterward they will not be helped. Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found save [where they grasp] a rope from Allah and a rope from man. They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve the revelations of Allah, and slew the Prophets wrongfully. That is because they were rebellious and used to transgress.” Surat Al-Imran (III), verses 109-111 Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors. The Islamic World is burning. It is incumbent upon each one of us to pour some water, little as it may be, with a view of extinguishing as much of the fire as he can, without awaiting action by the others.

Article One: The Ideological AspectsThe Islamic Resistance Movement draws its guidelines from Islam; derives from it its thinking, interpretations and views about existence, life and humanity; refers back to it for its conduct; and is inspired by it in whatever step it takes.

Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim BrothersThe Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.Article Three: Structure and EssenceThe basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Muslims who are devoted to Allah and worship Him verily [as it is written]: “I have created Man and Devil for the purpose of their worship” [of Allah]. Those Muslims are cognizant of their duty towards themselves, their families and country and they have been relying on Allah for all that. They have raised the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors in order to extricate the country and the people from the [oppressors’] desecration, filth and evil.

Article Four The Movement welcomes all Muslims who share its beliefs and thinking, commit themselves to its course of action, keep its secrets and aspire to join its ranks in order to carry out their duty. Allah will reward them.

Article Five: Dimensions of Time and Space of the HamasAs the Movement adopts Islam as its way of life, its time dimension extends back as far as the birth of the Islamic Message and of the Righteous Ancestor. Its ultimate goal is Islam, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution. Its special dimension extends wherever on earth there are Muslims, who adopt Islam as their way of life; thus, it penetrates to the deepest reaches of the land and to the highest spheres of Heavens.

Article Six: Peculiarity and IndependenceThe Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinct Palestinian Movement which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. Only under the shadow of Islam could the members of all regions coexist in safety and security for their lives, properties and rights. In the absence of Islam, conflict arises, oppression reigns, corruption is rampant and struggles and wars prevail. Allah had inspired the Muslim poet, Muhammad Iqbal, when he said:When the Faith wanes, there is no securityThere is no this-worldliness for those who have no faith Those who wish to live their life without religionHave made annihilation the equivalent of life.

Article Seven: The Universality of HamasBy virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one. It is apt to be that due to the clarity of its thinking, the nobility of its purpose and the loftiness of its objectives. It is in this light that the Movement has to be regarded, evaluated and acknowledged. Whoever denigrates its worth, or avoids supporting it, or is so blind as to dismiss its role, is challenging Fate itself. Whoever closes his eyes from seeing the facts, whether intentionally or not, will wake up to find himself overtaken by events, and will find no excuses to justify his position. Priority is reserved to the early comers. Oppressing those who are closest to you, is more of an agony to the soul than the impact of an Indian sword. “And unto thee have we revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which has come unto thee. For each we have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed, He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which he has given you [He has made you as you are]. So vie with one another in good works. Unto Allah, you will all return. He will then inform you of that wherein you differ.” Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

Article Eight: The Slogan of the HamasAllah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.

The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

Article Nine: Motives and ObjectivesHamas finds itself at a period of time when Islam has waned away from the reality of life. For this reason, the checks and balances have been upset, concepts have become confused, and values have been transformed; evil has prevailed, oppression and obscurity have reigned; cowards have turned tigers, homelands have been usurped, people have been uprooted and are wandering all over the globe. The state of truth has disappeared and was replaced by the state of evil. Nothing has remained in its right place, for when Islam is removed from the scene, everything changes. These are the motives. As to the objectives: discarding the evil, crushing it and defeating it, so that truth may prevail, homelands revert [to their owners], calls for prayer be heard from their mosques, announcing the reinstitution of the Muslim state. Thus, people and things will revert to their true place.

Article TenThe Islamic Resistance Movement, while breaking its own path, will do its utmost to constitute at the same time a support to the weak, a defense to all the oppressed. It will spare no effort to implement the truth and abolish evil, in speech and in fact, both here and in any other location where it can reach out and exert influence.

Article Eleven: The Strategy of Hamas: Palestine is an Islamic WaqfThe Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right, nor has that right any organization or the aggregate of all organizations, be they Palestinian or Arab, because Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection? This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. This [norm] has prevailed since the commanders of the Muslim armies completed the conquest of Syria and Iraq, and they asked the Caliph of Muslims, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, for his view of the conquered land, whether it should be partitioned between the troops or left in the possession of its population, or otherwise. Following discussions and consultations between the Caliph of Islam, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, and the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, be peace and prayer upon him, they decided that the land should remain in the hands of its owners to benefit from it and from its wealth; but the control of the land and the land itself ought to be endowed as a Waqf [in perpetuity] for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. The ownership of the land by its owners is only one of usufruct, and this Waqf will endure as long as Heaven and earth last. Any demarche in violation of this law of Islam, with regard to Palestine, is baseless and reflects on its perpetrators.Article Twelve: Hamas in Palestine, Its Views on Homeland and NationalismHamas regards Nationalism (Wataniyya) as part and parcel of the religious faith. Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims. And this becomes an individual duty binding on every Muslim man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband’s authorization, and a slave without his masters’ permission. This [principle] does not exist under any other regime, and it is a truth not to be questioned. While other nationalisms consist of material, human and territorial considerations, the nationality of Hamas also carries, in addition to all those, the all important divine factors which lend to it its spirit and life; so much so that it connects with the origin of the spirit and the source of life and raises in the skies of the Homeland the Banner of the Lord, thus inexorably connecting earth with Heaven. When Moses came and threw his baton, sorcery and sorcerers became futile.

Article Thirteen: Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: “Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.” From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. Since when did the Unbelievers do justice to the Believers? “And the Jews will not be pleased with thee, nor will the Christians, till thou follow their creed. Say: Lo! the guidance of Allah [himself] is the Guidance. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come unto thee, then you would have from Allah no protecting friend nor helper.” Sura 2 (the Cow), verse 120 There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility. The Palestinian people are too noble to have their future, their right and their destiny submitted to a vain game. As the hadith has it: “The people of Syria are Allah’s whip on this land; He takes revenge by their intermediary from whoever he wished among his worshipers. The Hypocrites among them are forbidden from vanquishing the true believers, and they will die in anxiety and sorrow.” (Told by Tabarani, who is traceable in ascending order of traditionaries to Muhammad, and by Ahmed whose chain of transmission is incomplete. But it is bound to be a true hadith, for both story tellers are reliable. Allah knows best.)

Article Fourteen: The Three CirclesThe problem of the liberation of Palestine relates to three circles: the Palestinian, the Arab and the Islamic. Each one of these circles has a role to play in the struggle against Zionism and it has duties to fulfill. It would be an enormous mistake and an abysmal act of ignorance to disregard anyone of these circles. For Palestine is an Islamic land where the First Qibla and the third holiest site are located. That is also the place whence the Prophet, be Allah’s prayer and peace upon him, ascended to heavens. “Glorified be He who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of worship to the Far Distant Place of Worship, the neighborhood whereof we have blessed, that we might show him of our tokens! Lo! He, only He, is the Hearer, the Seer.” Sura XVII (al-Isra’), verse 1 In consequence of this state of affairs, the liberation of that land is an individual duty binding on all Muslims everywhere. This is the base on which all Muslims have to regard the problem; this has to be understood by all Muslims. When the problem is dealt with on this basis, where the full potential of the three circles is mobilized, then the current circumstances will change and the day of liberation will come closer. “You are more awful as a fear in their bosoms than Allah. That is because they are a folk who understand not.” Sura LIX, (Al-Hashr, the Exile), verse 13.

One can, indeed, object to Israeli policy without being an anti-Semite. I object frequently, with specificity, and in writing. Generally, I offer a humble opinion as to amelioration.

One cannot support Hamas and shriek, "Death to Israel", without being an anti-Semite.

Should Israeli’s park themselves on lawn chairs, drink wine, and cheer the fireworks in Gaza? Yea. They need an outlet for the stress under which they live. Those lawn chairs cannot be further than 90 seconds from a bomb shelter and the kids must be within arms’ reach. Such harmless bravado is preferable to fetching their Tavors and heading into East Jerusalem.

Neturei Karta opposed the establishment of and retain all opposition to the existence of the so-called "State of Israel"!

Neturei-Karta is the Aramaic term for "Guardians of the City. The name Neturei-Karta originates from an incident in which R. Yehudah Ha-Nassi (Rabbi Judah the Prince) sent R. Hiyya and R. Ashi on a pastoral tour of inspection. In one town they asked to see the "guardians of the city" and the city guard was paraded before them. They said that these were not the guardians of the city but its destroyers,

The group was founded in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1938, by those who wanted to maintain their faith and continue the struggle against Zionism...

Judaism And Zionism Are Not The Same Thinghttp://www.nkusa.org/aboutus/zionism/judaism_isnot_zionism.cfmWe would like to take a few minutes of your time to prevent you from making a terrible mistake that may have disastrous results for many.

You have always without a doubt heard and read much about the political crises in the Middle East in which the State of Israel plays a central role. This is, in fact, an ongoing series of crises with potential to bring the greatest misfortune on the entire world. Tragically many believe that Zionism and Judaism are identical. Thus they conclude that the entire Jewish people is responsible for the actions of the Zionist government and the world crises which emanates from it. This is a Grave Error!

The truth is that the Jewish faith and Zionism are two very different philosophies. They are as opposite as day and night. The Jewish people have existed for thousands of years. In their two thousand years of Divinely decreed exile no Jew ever sought to end this exile and establish independent political sovereignty anywhere. The people's sole purpose was the study and fulfillment of the Divine commandments of the Torah.

The Zionist movement created the Israeli state. The latter is a persuasion less than one hundred years old. Its essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism's inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people stood in staunch opposition to it.

To this day Torah Jewry remains forever loyal to its faith. Zionists want the world to believe that they are the representatives of the entire Jewish people. This is false! The Jewish people never chose them as their leaders.The Zionists have deceived many well meaning Jewish people via terror, trickery and false propaganda. They have at their disposal the use of a nearly universally subservient media. Whoever attempts to criticize them puts his livelihood and, at times, his very life in danger.

This website was created to expose the violence and oppression perpetrated by the Zionists and their State of "Israel" against the Jewish people who remain true to the Almighty, Judaism and the Torah.

Judaism does not condone violence. Judaism demands that Jews be good citizens of the countries in which they reside and that they live peacefully with respect for and subservience to the ruling powers.

Judaism teaches us, that the right for the Jewish people to have self rule in the Holy Land is not unconditional. Since the destruction of our Holy Temple over two thousand years ago, the Jewish people have been exiled from this land by Divine decree. The Talmud tells us that G-d obligated us not to rebel against the ruling bodies, and not to take the land of Israel by force (see Babylonian Talmud tractate Kesubos 111A).

The aggression that Zionism presents in originally taking the Holy Land from its indigenous inhabitants is the first flag that exposes this movement for what it is -- a real deviation from Judaism. Judaism forbids us from taking the land away from those who currently have jurisdiction over it. That such things should be done not only in opposition to Judaism, but in the name of the very Judaism it defies is simply large-scale fraud. Zionism, once exposed, proves to be the greatest enemy, the worst nightmare, to the Jewish religion and it's practitioners, that exists to date. Zionism, strikes out regularly at Jews who remain true to Torah and its precepts. There are many Jews who protest against the very existence of the State of Israel, and who are quite vocal, albeit peaceful, about their opposition. Whenever Zionist policies or activities run counter to the Torah stance, Torah-true Jews come forward to unmask the imposter. Unfortunately, they have many opportunities to voice their stand, because few countries in the world tramples on the religious rights of its inhabitants as regularly as does the State of Israel. Witness, the routine autopsies which are done against the stated, tearful wishes of the family. Witness, the ancient, sacred burial grounds ripped open with abandon for the construction of yet another mall, with bare bones, hundreds of years old treated to the absolute desecration of careless disposal, and the list goes on and on... Protesters suffer terribly at the hands of the Zionists, who try to quash all opposition and deal with their peaceful detractors in the most brutal fashion. This fact, too, is yet another proof that this movement cannot speak for Judaism -- because Judaism opposes aggression and would never sanction the bloodshed of brothers who seek only to remain true to the Torah.

This is, unfortunately, a little-known fact - that Zionism is constantly criticized by the fervently Orthodox Jews - critics whose opposition is not predicated on the political correctness of our point in time, and that these detractors do so under pain of physical torture. The secular establishment, which by and large celebrates Zionism as a replacement for Judaism, a transformation that does not mandate any religious observance per se, hogs the traditional media venues and will not be party to letting the voice of the observant Jew, be known. The worldwide Jewish Federations, Jewish Agency and similar organizations claim to speak for all Jews but actually represent only the views of a misguided segment of the Jewish people. "Israel" today is equated with "Jew" - but what a travesty! The Israeli government is quite happy to have gotten away with this fraud, and certainly won't allow news of any cracks in the mask to be recognized. The average reader today will not see this in the press, because the powers to be, don't want you to know this.

But as the pictures and articles on this site demonstrate, opposition to Zionism from within Judaism is not a fringe movement but rather, an intrinsic characteristic and a mainstay of Judaism itself. This opposition has continually suffersd bloodshed and tremendous tragedy. Jews who are loyal to the Torah find it imperative to have the following points on the record:

Zionism is not Judaism.

The founding principles of Zionism run counter to Judaism.

The State of "Israel" does not represent the Jewish people.

Aggressive acts committed in the name of Zionism are crimes and not religious imperatives.

Thanks to the Mossad, Israel's "Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks", the Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat's Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)".

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement in Palestine, returning from Cairo in the seventies, established an Islamic charity association. Prime Minister Golda Meir, saw this as a an opportunity to counterbalance the rise of Arafat’s Fatah movement. .According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit (October 1987), "The Islamic associations as well as the university had been supported and encouraged by the Israeli military authority" in charge of the (civilian) administration of the West Bank and Gaza. "They [the Islamic associations and the university] were authorized to receive money payments from abroad."

The Islamists set up orphanages and health clinics, as well as a network of schools, workshops which created employment for women as well as system of financial aid to the poor. And in 1978, they created an "Islamic University" in Gaza. "The military authority was convinced that these activities would weaken both the PLO and the leftist organizations in Gaza." At the end of 1992, there were six hundred mosques in Gaza. Thanks to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks) , the Islamists were allowed to reinforce their presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the members of Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) and the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression.

In 1984, Ahmed Yassin was arrested and condemned to twelve years in prison, after the discovery of a hidden arms cache. But one year later, he was set free and resumed his activities. And when the Intifada (‘uprising’) began, in October 1987, which took the Islamists by surprise, Sheik Yassin responded by creating the Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement): "God is our beginning, the prophet our model, the Koran our constitution", proclaims article 7 of the charter of the organization.

Ahmed Yassin was in prison when, the Oslo accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government) were signed in September 1993. The Hamas had rejected Oslo outright. But at that time, 70% of Palestinians had condemned the attacks on Israeli civilians. Yassin did everything in his power to undermine the Oslo accords. Even prior to Prime Minister Rabin’s death, he had the support of the Israeli government. The latter was very reluctant to implement the peace agreement.

The Hamas then launched a carefully timed campaign of attacks against civilians, one day before the meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, regarding the formal recognition of Israel by the National Palestinian Council. These events were largely instrumental in the formation of a Right wing Israeli government following the May 1996 elections.

Quite unexpectedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Sheik Ahmed Yassin to be released from prison ("on humanitarian grounds") where he was serving a life sentence. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, together with President Bill Clinton, was putting pressure on Arafat to control the Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu knew that he could rely, once more, on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo accords. Worse still: after having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza, where he was welcomed triumphantly as a hero in October 1997.

Arafat was helpless in the face of these events. Moreover, because he had supported Saddam Hussein during the1991 Gulf war, (while the Hamas had cautiously abstained from taking sides), the Gulf states decided to cut off their financing of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, between February and April 1998, Sheik Ahmad Yassin was able to raise several hundred million dollars, from those same countries. The the budget of The Hamas was said to be greater than that of the Palestinian Authority. These new sources of funding enabled the Islamists to effectively pursue their various charitable activities. It is estimated that one Palestinian out of three is the recipient of financial aid from the Hamas. And in this regard, Israel has done nothing to curb the inflow of money into the occupied territories.

The Hamas had built its strength through its various acts of sabotage of the peace process, in a way which was compatible with the interests of the Israeli government. In turn, the latter sought in a number of ways, to prevent the application of the Oslo accords. In other words, Hamas was fulfilling the functions for which it was originally created: to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. And in this regard, Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length.

Mujahideen trained and funded by the US are among its deadliest foes, reports Jason Burke in Peshawar

theguardian.com, Sunday 17 January 1999 00.42 EST

When Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a hospital technician from Brooklyn, New Jersey, returned home from the war in Afghanistan in 1989, he told friends his only desire was to return. Though he had been wounded in the arm and leg by a Russian shell, he said he had failed. He had not achieved martyrdom in the name of Islam.

So he found a different theatre for his holy war and achieved a different sort of martyrdom. Three years ago, he was convicted of planning a series of massive explosions in Manhattan and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Hampton-el was described by prosecutors as a skilled bomb-maker. It was hardly surprising. In Afghanistan he fought with the Hezb-i-Islami group of mujahideen, whose training and weaponry were mainly supplied by the CIA.

He was not alone. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.

Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist.

Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia in 1979, aged 22. Though he saw a considerable amount of combat - around the eastern city of Jalalabad in March 1989 and, earlier, around the border town of Khost - his speciality was logistics.

From his base in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, he used his experience of the construction trade, and his money, to build a series of bases where the mujahideen could be trained by their Pakistani, American and, if some recent press reports are to be believed, British advisers.

One of the camps bin Laden built, known as Al-Badr, was the target of the American missile strikes against him last summer. Now it is used by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based organisation that trains volunteers to fight in Kashmir.

Some of their recruits kidnapped and almost certainly killed a group of Western hostages a few years ago. The bases are still full of new volunteers, many

Pakistanis. Most of those who were killed in last August's

strikes were Pakistani.

A Harkut-ul-Mujahideen official said last week that it had Germans and Britons fighting for the cause, as well as Egyptians, Palestinians and Saudis. Muslims from the West as well as from the Middle East and North Africa are regularly stopped by Pakistani police on the road up the Khyber Pass heading for the camps. Hundreds get through. Afghan veterans have now joined bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

Some have returned to former battlegrounds, like the university-educated Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key figure in the Egyptian al-Jihad terrorist group. Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East. Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group. Al-Zawahiri has become a close aide of bin Laden and has now returned to Afghanistan to work with him. His al-Jihad group has been linked to the Yemeni kidnappers.

One Saudi journalist who interviewed bin Laden in 1989 remembers three of his close associates going under the names of Abu Mohammed, Abu Hafz and Abu Ahmed. All three fought with bin Laden in the early Eighties, travelled with him to the Sudan and have come back to Afghanistan. Afghan veterans, believed to include men who fought the Americans in Somalia, have also returned.

Other members of al-Quaeda remain overseas. Afghan veterans now linked to bin Laden have been traced by investigators to Pakistan, East Africa, Albania, Chechnya, Algeria, France, the US and Britain.

At least one of the kidnappers in Yemen was reported to have fought in Afghanistan and to be linked to al-Quaeda. Despite reports that bin Laden was effectively funded by the Americans, it is impossible to gauge how much American aid he received. He was not a major figure in the Afghan war. Most American weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, were channelled by the Pakistanis to the Hezb-i-Islami faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bin Laden was only loosely connected with the group, serving under another Hezb-i-Islami commander known as Engineer Machmud. However, bin Laden's Office of Services, set up to recruit overseas for the war, received some US cash.

But according to one American official, concentrating on bin Laden is a mistake. 'The point is not the individuals,' he said last week. 'The point is that we created a whole cadre of trained and motivated people who turned against us. It's a classic Frankenstein's monster situation.'

Others point out that the military contribution of the 'Arabs', as the overseas volunteers were known, was relatively small. 'The fighting was done by the Afghans and most of them went back to their fields when Kabul fell to the mujahideen,' said Kamaal Khan, a Pakistani defence analyst. 'Ironically, the bulk of American aid went to the least effective fighters, who turned most strongly to bite the hand that fed them.'

By canceling flights to Tel Aviv, rendering Israel effectively without an international airport, the West just forced Netanyahu's hand. He must now proceed to destroy Hamas at the roots and reoccupy Gaza. Fortunately the political weather (with Egypt currently frowning on the Muslim Brotherhood, the President of the United States having burnt his bridges with Israel, and Hamas having alienated their Iranian benefactors by siding against Assad in Syria) makes this the best opportunity to do so.

Just think of what might have been when Israel left the strip, left the greenhouses (donated by an American Jewish diplomat) if Gazans had embraced building a state. Tourism and wealth, the Med? boardwalks and restaurants.

It was all there to happen..

I lobbied Congress for it...

I remember sitting in my Congressman's office telling him about how Hong Kong could do it, why not Gaza..

"Since the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, participants at anti-Israel demonstrations across Germany have frequently used anti-Semitic slogans and also called for Jews to be gassed — a reference to the killing of Jews by the Nazis in the Holocaust."

I think they should be allowed to protest and say whatever is on their mind. Of course, they are anti-Semites. And?

Israel now knows what it faces, a good thing. Israel should not hesitate to go full tilt boogie.

"Other cruise lines have yet to adjust their schedules, but say they are watching the situation carefully. The main tourist season for Israel, which has two major cruise ports - Haifa and Ashdod - doesn't begin until fall, when the weather cools down.

Thomson , Costa, Seabourn, Holland America, Celebrity, Silversea, Azamara, Princess, MSC and P & O all have Israel on itineraries through December 2014, with the bulk of cruises occurring in October. Azamara, for example, has yet to cancel the Israeli ports on its October 14 Journey of St. Paul cruise; it is monitoring the situation, the line said in a statement."

"The safety and security of our guests and crew members are always our highest priority," according to the statement.

Other lines that reported back to Cruise Critic that they had not yet changed any itineraries are Celebrity and Holland America.

G-d forbid to accept the position of the Zionist heretics, who want to take the Holy Land by force and rebel against the government, for it will be bitter for them in the end. They hate the Torah and it is like a thorn in their eye. G-d forbid to support them with money, for they are not Jews. Without Torah, one is neither a Jew nor a gentile, and they have no right to speak in the name of the Jewish people. Who appointed them for this mission? We have no portion with them. (Lechem Shlomo, Drasha 120, Shavuos 5699)

G-d forbid to support the Zionists, for they have brought all this upon us. They want to achieve a government there. G-d forbid! For it is better for us to be in exile under the nations of the world than to be in spiritual exile under them. And I adjure you: G-d forbid to donate even one penny to those heretics and wicked Jews, by whose hands many innocent souls have been killed. (Lechem Shlomo, Drasha 144)

We do not agree to join the wicked people who are called Zionists, for there is no heavier or worse exile that what they wish to achieve when they rule over us, may G-d protect us from them and their masses. (Avnei Hamakom, Even Hoezer p. 55)

But these organization do not build, they destroy; they lay to the ground the Holy Land and the Holy City of Jerusalem. All the tragedies from which we suffer today are due to them and their actions. G-d forbid to support them with money, and whoever gives to them is strengthening the hands of heretics and bringing misfortunes upon the Jewish people; their sin is too great to bear. This is as clear as the sun to anyone whose eyes are not pasted over. (Tiul Bapardes v. 1 Lamed, 15)

Not only did the Zionists cause us to suffer great tragedies in all the countries of Europe; their wickedness goes even further. For if the filthy Zionists had not roared with a great voice, “The Land is ours” and requested that they be given the Land in order to make a Jewish state, the Arabs would not have done any harm to us. On the contrary, the Holy Land would now be a haven for Jewish refugees from Europe. The Arab people were always kind to the Jews living in Palestine; Jews could walk alone in the streets at night without fear. For many years they did not do any harm to Jews. It would not have occurred to them not to accept them or to do them any harm. But since the Arabs saw the Zionists saying, “The Land is mine” and wishing to be masters there, they were aroused to persecute us. If so, all the evil and misfortunes are the fault of the Zionists. (ibid.)

Not only did the Zionists cause us to suffer great tragedies in all the countries of Europe; their wickedness goes even further. For if the filthy Zionists had not roared with a great voice, “The Land is ours” and requested that they be given the Land in order to make a Jewish state, the Arabs would not have done any harm to us.

On the contrary, the Holy Land would now be a haven for Jewish refugees from Europe.

The Arab people were always kind to the Jews living in Palestine;

Jews could walk alone in the streets at night without fear.

For many years they did not do any harm to Jews.

It would not have occurred to them not to accept them or to do them any harm.

But since the Arabs saw the Zionists saying, “The Land is mine” and wishing to be masters there, they were aroused to persecute us. If so, all the evil and misfortunes are the fault of the Zionists.

Zionism was the movement begun in late 19th C. Europe to give Jews a homeland and place of safety from Europeans. As a result of attempted European genocide in the mid-20th C., the Jewish State of Israel came into being. Its official religion is Judaism as that is interpreted by Orthodox rabbis – Zionism, Jews, Israel, Judaism. This turd has no clean end; but for those so inclined, feel free to keep playing with it like fixated chimps.

What a shame there is no double-bold script. On the other hand, only about five people out of Earth's 7 billion bother to read the tripe, so it really doesn’t matter…making no difference, one bold stroke at a time.

>>>>Article Seven: The Universality of HamasBy virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one. It is apt to be that due to the clarity of its thinking, the nobility of its purpose and the loftiness of its objectives. It is in this light that the Movement has to be regarded, evaluated and acknowledged. Whoever denigrates its worth, or avoids supporting it, or is so blind as to dismiss its role, is challenging Fate itself. Whoever closes his eyes from seeing the facts, whether intentionally or not, will wake up to find himself overtaken by events, and will find no excuses to justify his position. Priority is reserved to the early comers. Oppressing those who are closest to you, is more of an agony to the soul than the impact of an Indian sword. “And unto thee have we revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which has come unto thee. For each we have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed, He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which he has given you [He has made you as you are]. So vie with one another in good works. Unto Allah, you will all return. He will then inform you of that wherein you differ.” Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).<<<<

((((((((The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree)))))))

Hitler accused Einstein and others of practicing "Jewish science and math". I wonder if he ever considered what he had pissed away while living out his last few wretched days in his Berlin bunker? I doubt it. Jew hatred is an ancient illness, having no known cause and no known cure. It becomes evil incarnate, making zombies of its adherents.

I could find only one criuse line (German) having cancelled a couple trips to Israel. It appears the vast majority have not. The poorer economies of Israel's tourist dependent neighbors will be adversely affected should tourism be held hostage by Messrs. Kerry and Obama while trying to squeeze Netanyahu.

It is rather pathetic. No visual impact of the suffering moves them. Uncle canceling their flights is most disturbing though. Rat, rudely noted that with all those existential missiles perilously endangering 90% of Israel, how is it possible that it remain open? Could there be a magic tribal cloak, provided by the prophets, protecting commerce at the airport? No need to disturb the tourists. Let the dirty war continue. The dark forces of Kerry spoling the Israeli transport scene.

The always homicidal (on a galactic ethnic scale of course), wio, saw a young man desperately looking for his family, leading ambulance workers to their rescue, captured on a video being shot down, paralyzed at the hip and then finished off with one more bullet (the first shot being the Israel ” knock” I suppose) delivered by a nice Jewish boy, no doubt in a spiffy uniform. Perhaps not. Israel doesn’t do spiffy well. No matter, Allen does. Marine trained, dog tags and dd-214 in his hip pocket, combat hardened Allen, a marine’s marine,( unlike sad sack Rufus), noted the cell phone in the doomed lad’s hand, justification enough to double tap the poor fucker to send him to join his dead family, all enemies of the state, Israel, the indispensable US strategic asset.

Then we heard from planet Mercury, the loathsome T, now joined at the hip with her former tormentors. The wedding in Stockholm complete. Twit and Twat, hand in hand, Bible verse and inane vomit, one senseless sentence at a time.

Security was tight (and needed) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington, D.C. This year’s conference of Christians United for Israel brought thousands to the nation’s capital. Planned a year in advance, conferees could hardly have expected more dramatic events in the world to highlight their 10th Annual Washington Summit.

Gary Bauer was a lead-off speaker. A former top Reagan administration official (and former president of Family Research Council), Bauer criticized what he sees as moral equivalence between the Arabs and Israelis in the perennial Mideast conflict. Israel and the U.S. are not merely allies, Bauer argued. We were allied with the USSR. Alliances come and go, depending on the crisis. (Recall that the Assads’ Syria was an ally in the first Gulf War!) No, Gary Bauer said: the U.S. and Israel are pillars of Western civilization. In every report on human rights, Bauer noted, the top violators on any global listing are always Islamic countries. That’s because, he argued, that Jews and Christians have a belief in human rights that are inalienable, that are “endowed by our Creator.” There is no doubt that that Creator is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Against this view is that of moral equivalence seen every day on TV. A CNN reporter saw a crowd cheer when their Israeli Defense Force unit hit a Hamas rocket site. That reporter tweeted "SCUM" against the jubilant Jews. Did she mean SCUD? No! She really thought the Israelis were wrong to cheer the destruction of a rocket site that was targeting Israeli homes, schools, and hospitals. That reporter was reassigned – to Moscow. She should feel right at home there.

Bauer said that CNNer was doubtless a graduate of the Helen Thomas School of Journalism. The much-honored Helen Thomas, the senior White House reporter, infamously said the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine.” Where should they go? Thomas was asked. “Back to Poland and Germany,” the eighty-ish pundit replied. Really?

Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize=winning columnist and FOX commentator, provided a thunderous response to Helen Thomas. He cited Barbara Tuchman’s famous point: the Israelis are the only people in the world who inhabit the same land, speak the same language, and worship the same God their ancestors did three thousand years ago.

Krauthammer's quote reminds us of the question of Frederick the Great. When the famed king of Prussia expressed his skepticism about miracles, his court advisers said simply: the Jews. Krauthammer noted that the U.S., Canada, and Australia are all great nations founded by colonizers from Great Britain. Not so Israel. The homecoming of the Jews to Israel is so sure that you can dig anywhere in that young nation and find coins printed in Hebrew from as long ago as 135 AD. The longing of the Jewish people for their homeland has never been given up. For thousands of years they prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

With the celebrations of the German victory in the World Cup, it’s worth noting one of history’s great oddities. Berlin leaped for joy with their football team’s success. Berlin was last Germany’s capital during the Third Reich. And the United Nations was formed in 1945 expressly to make war on Nazi Germany. For half a century, defeated Germany was cut in two. And so was Berlin.

But when Germany reunited in 1990, with the able help of George H.W. Bush, the German Bundestag voted to move their capital from Bonn to Berlin. By 1999, dozens of foreign embassies had packed up their bags and quietly moved the 478 kilometers to Berlin. There was no controversy, no dispute. Not one country refused to recognize Berlin as the capital of a united Germany.

Today, however, even the U.S. State Department, under orders from President Obama, former Sec. Hillary Clinton, and now, under Sec. of State John Kerry, refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Hillary Clinton even went to the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the application of an American Jewish couple to have their child’s birth abroad certificate and passport list “Jerusalem, Israel” as the place of birth. The Supreme Court sided with Hillary and Obama in denying that Jerusalem is even part of the State of Israel.

Is there any other nation on Earth that cannot name its own capital? Was Jerusalem ever the capital of any other country? When the Jordanians controlled Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967, it was not their capital. Amman was. And the Turks, who ruled the Ottoman Empire for seven hundred years, never sought to make Jerusalem their capital.

Thus, we see why Israel needs to rely on herself for her defense. The Israelis, Charles Krauthammer pointed out, have in their IDF the first Jewish army since the Bar Kochba revolt against the Roman Empire.

If the Israelites then weren’t afraid to take on the Romans, today’s Israelis are not going to back down against Iran or CNN.

An Israeli soldier was silhouetted as he guarded a post overlooking Bethlehem last month.

REUTERS/file

An Israeli soldier was silhouetted as he guarded a post overlooking Bethlehem last month.

The Pew Research Center last week released a new survey of American attitudes in the Middle East. The results weren’t surprising. In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, 51 percent of Americans say they sympathize more with Israel. Only 14 percent feel greater affinity for the Palestinians.

Pew’s findings demonstrate the strength of pro-Israel feeling in the United States. The poll was conducted amid the current fighting with Hamas, but the bottom line hardly changed from Pew’s last survey in April, when it reported that in the 36 years it has been sampling public opinion, “sympathy toward Israel has never been higher.”

But below the surface, America’s Israel-friendly consensus is splitting along the same left-vs.-right fault line that has polarized so many other issues. While support for Israel is overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives, it has been shrinking among Democrats and liberals. “The partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider,” reports Pew, with 73 percent of Republicans sympathetic to Israel in the ongoing conflict, but just 44 percent of Democrats. Respondents identifying as liberal Democrats were five times as likely as conservative Republicans to sympathize more with the Palestinians.Related

John Kerry returns to Mideast

Thus is the Democratic Party losing its way on one of the great moral issues of our time.

For roughly the first third of Israel’s existence, Democrats tended to support the Jewish state more strongly than Republicans did. In a compelling new book, “Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel,” foreign-affairs thinker Joshua Muravchik writes that during the run-up to the Six Day War in 1967, “Israel was above all a cause championed by liberals.” So heartfelt was this support that even ardent Democratic opponents of the Vietnam War, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Eugene McCarthy, advocated US military action on Israel’s behalf.

Only over the last 25 years has support for Israel grown so much greater among Republicans than among Democrats. The reasons for the divergence are many. On the right, they include the high value Republicans have attached to Israel as a stable ally in a very unstable region, as well as the migration to the GOP of evangelical Christians, many of whom support the Jewish state as a matter of transcendent conviction.

But on the left, the Israeli-Arab dispute itself has been redefined. Liberals used to see the stakes with no illusions: A small Jewish democracy, an outpost of liberal Western values, was surrounded by brutal Arab dictatorships that denied its very right to exist. That moral clarity has eroded, partly because of facts on the ground over years of conflict — but ultimately through a skillful war of ideas, first launched on the radical left, to reframe the conflict by making Israel the villain and casting Palestinians, who had never been considered a nation, as an oppressed underdog seeking independence.

This intellectual assault began, as Muravchik details, when the Soviet Union, angered by Israel’s defeat of its Arab clients in 1967, engineered a propaganda campaign to delegitimize Zionism. Moscow embraced the PLO, assiduously promoting its significance to the global “anti-imperialist struggle.” The campaign was fought on many fronts, from academia to the United Nations to the media. Over time the anti-Israel narrative gained such traction that the Jewish state, though still a humane and liberal democracy, became one of the world’s most reviled nations.

Needless to say, Israel’s policies are always a legitimate target for honest criticism, as Israelis themselves — often among their government’s harshest critics — would be the first to assert. But critics ought to acknowledge that Israel’s choices are made by a democratic government confronting relentless security threats from an enemy sworn to its destruction. To fail to recognize that moral context is to miss what matters most — to be blind to the conflict’s essence.

Yet wherever the left holds sway, Israel is seen through jaundiced eyes. There has been an unprecedented moral inversion, illustrating the power of a noxious idea to seep from the ideological fringe to the mainstream.

The United States is not yet down to one pro-Israel party. But the seepage among Democrats continues. At the 2012 Democratic convention, a fight erupted over the deletion from the party’s platform of standard language acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It took an order from the White House to restore the pro-Israel clause, and even then it had to be gaveled through over the vocal opposition of half the convention delegates.

Not long ago, such a hostile gesture would have been unthinkable. Now, with each new poll confirming Democratic chilliness toward the Jewish state Democrats once loved, can it be anything but a precursor of worse to come?

The trendline is clear.The people are tired of supporting the killers of children.The Israeli have averaged killing 13 Palestinian children a month, each and every month of the 21st century.

The humorous thing, the sheeple are breaking ranks with the Global elitists over Israel, not onerous taxes on labor or the surveillance state, but the purveyors of continuous conflict. The 24 hour news cycle, the steady stream of images from the battlefield ... It harkens back to Walter Cronkite.

Israel rebukes UN human rights chief for suggesting IDF guilty of war crimes in Gaza The JPost reports that the government of Israel continues to deny reality and blames the victims and the watchers for citing Israeli transgressions of international law..

Though solar power is still far from surpassing coal as America’s primary energy source, the number of people employed by the solar industry has surpassed the number of coal miners. The non-profit Solar Foundation estimates that there are about 142,000 people in the U.S. workforce who spend “at least 50% of their time supporting solar-related activities,” according to Business Insider.

So what does this mean for the future of energy in America? Quite simply put, it highlights how solar power is growing at a rapid pace, with record-breaking 43 GWH estimated to be installed around the world this year, and the U.S. is estimated to make up about 6.6 GWH of those new installations. Other nations, including China and India, are investing even more heavily into solar though, and the race is on to make . . . . . . . .

The always homicidal (on a galactic ethnic scale of course), wio, saw a young man desperately looking for his family, leading ambulance workers to their rescue, captured on a video being shot down, paralyzed at the hip and then finished off with one more bullet (the first shot being the Israel ” knock” I suppose) delivered by a nice Jewish boy, no doubt in a spiffy uniform. Perhaps not.

You write in a vacuum, you create facts and erase facts at your choosing.

Oh, I would have thought on an occasion or two I read your posts on specific ethnic cleansing, some through euphemism others direct and specific. Regarding the wearing of uniforms, you are endorsing International conventions on warfare, regulations and laws that nations are bound to follow. Is that al a carte?

Somehow, with all due respect, I believe my “supposed” military service is demonstrably more provable than your “supposed” family tree of dead and wounded veterans, excluding your personal exemption, for whatever reason.

Germany is #1 in the World for Energy Efficiency, according to the 2014 scorecard released by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) today. Sixteen nations were studied. Six of the top 10 were from Europe. Canada was the only North American nation to make the cut, placing 9th.

“Germany is a prime example of a nation that has made energy efficiency a top priority,” ACEEE Executive Director Steven Nadel said in a press release. “The United States, long considered an innovative and competitive world leader, has progressed slowly and has made limited progress since our last report, even as Germany, Italy, China, and other nations surge ahead.”

Robert Peterson does not believe the Obama story about the IRS, but buys in, whole hog, on the Obama administration storyline of the shoot down of MH-17.

State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harfclaiming Monday that the State Department’s certainty of Russian involvement in the apparent downing of the plane was primarily based on “social media” evidence.

That means with a likely budget of more than $100 billion, the US Intelligence Community is making decisions that may involve global nuclear war based on people’s Tweets and YouTubes!

Asked in Monday’s State Department briefing about US government evidence for its claims of Russian government involvement and separatist direct blame for the shooting down of the plane, Harf said:

You saw the Secretary yesterday speak very clearly about our assessment that this was an SA-11 fired from Russian-backed, separatist-controlled territory; that we know – we saw in social media afterwards, we saw videos, we saw photos of the pro-Russian separatists bragging about shooting down an aircraft.

She added:

Based on open information which is basically common sense, right – we know where it was fired from, we know who has this weapon

.....Plans like the one touted by Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz includes elements that are worth exploring by those international interests trying to broker the ceasefire.

The plan calls for the international community to oversee the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip using the same system that is successfully ridding Syria of chemical weapons. In return, Arab countries and the international community would provide the Palestinian Authority with $50 billion to rehabilitate refugee camps and build the Gaza Strip.

Obviously, this cannot be achieved overnight.

Not unlike Israeli foreign policy that over the years has raised international awareness of the Iranian nuclear threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and others in the government should be spearheading a campaign to garner support for and involvement in the demilitarization of Gaza. There will be no quiet until it is demilitarized. The flare-ups of Gazan attacks every several months will continue. As soon as Hamas is forced to give up its arms, peace will reign, because Hamas aggression is the source of the conflict.

The demilitarization of Gaza is not just an Israeli interest.

Each time Israel is forced to carry out an extended military operation in response to rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, and cross-border terrorist attacks and kidnappings, thousands of Palestinian civilians inevitably suffer the consequences. Neutralizing Hamas’s military abilities would remove one of the many destructive forces operating in the region inspired by a violent and reactionary interpretation of Islam.

Egypt has an interest in a demilitarized Gaza Strip.

Hamas has been involved in deadly attacks on Egyptian forces in Sinai. And Egyptian antipathy toward Hamas is an extension of the war that President Adel Fattah al-Sisi is waging against Hamas’s ideological ally, the Muslim Brotherhood.........

What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.

The source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.